In 1999 while filming the video for Push Upstairs, Underworld recorded part of a live set they played in Sydney known as the "Blue Mountain" series. Later they encoded it to MP3 and distributed it via www.underworldlive.com (where it can still be found today).
The last track of this set is a great version of Bruce Lee which ends in additional spoken word from the sample of the woman's voice used throughout the song. This is interesting to me because the material being read was probably written by Underworld themselves (and not released outside the context of the song) yet it seems strangely familiar. Here I have transcribed part of the sample that was not used in the original song.
Skin taut as sails in a gale, hair always cut with a blunt tool,
muscular but thin like springs but not steel...
Junkie? Criminal? Fugitive?
Four young men and old each one up in his own head ...
Holed up in these flat stinking boxes out of the sun
Piggy little eyes
holes in skin
just enough to let in the light
We've got the wrong bloke,
but he's going to die anyway
it's nothing more to it if he don't move
See how slumped up the wall in the crumpled blanket
My husband was late for days
Wrong bloke, drops the gun
old black pistol onto the bed
heavy scars all over it
the thing had been changing hands all its life
Suture gets up from the other room
maybe went off accidental
maybe from ghosts in his head
eyes just enough to let the minimum of light in
maybe just having a laugh
Suture gets up from his bed in the next room and comes through
Target it's obvious the block on the other bed was the intended mark
starts rolling a fat joint, unfuzzed
his composure is evil he seems he's coming from a long way off
and now he's doing what he always planned for his moment
and you know he's a professional -- probably the only one there
and though he looks the same as the other three
something very different moves beneath his skin
Target is focused on the simple soothing task, motion response has kicked in for the final act and centuries of practice fashion the perfect conar long with measured madness.
He lights it and inhales
Suture walks in, deliberate and stiff.
Holds a pistol to the chest of Wrong Bloke and pulls the trigger
a thin jet of water hits him in the face like a circus clown
Wrong Bloke looks out of big eyes now
He's straining against something he's heard just to see what is really happening
arms limp, palms up.
Suture reaches down into the blankets beside him, across a grey bloodstained vest
and comes up with the old black pistol covered in scratches
back to bare metal like it's been kicking around the desert alone for years...